On my thread about that filthy stinking liar and his "article" about Mass Effect old school paper-and-pencil RPGs were brought up. So, I figured I'd waste some ink here about them.
Where to begin? Well, I suppose like a lot of gamers my first experience with an paper-and-pencil RPG was in my adolescence. I was nervous and I didn't understand how to use my dice properly and I may have fumbled with the pages and misunderstood what the book was saying. But aren't we all awkward the first time? Hit points? Classes? Levels? The game uses words and terms we think we understand but we really don't. But we don't want to look inexperienced so we overcompensate for lack of technique with enthusiasm. We jump in too soon and, before we know it, the session is over. We think we had a good time, and we probably did, but the game had a few more tricks it would have liked to shown us if only we took the time to listen, really listen, to what it was trying to tell us.
But then, sometimes, we find out the b**ch is crazy and didn't know what the hell she was talking about when we come across some "errata."
It's a trying time for a young lad. But it can be a lot of fun.
My first RPG was Shadowrun, 2nd Edition. Me and a friend tried to decipher the rules to no avail. In the end, we just made it all up as we went along. And, honestly, those were some of my best gaming years. I can't play or run a Shadowrun game to this day without brining part of that old game into the new.
Then came West End Games' Star Wars. Gaming gold, I tell ya! I have all the D20 Star Wars books but Wizards of the Coast cannot touch the greatness of the original. WOTC simply doesn't care enough for the property. The D6 Star Wars games created much of was the Expanded Universe became. D6 Star Wars sourcebooks became primer material for many new Star Wars novelists. When Luke Skywalker founded the new Jedi order, he broke Force powers into three categories: Control, Sense, and Alter. That's straight from the D6 Star Wars RPG.
From D6 Star Wars I moved on to other games such as Deadlands: The Wasted West, Brave New World, Earthdawn, Vampire: The Masquerade, and Hunter: The Reckoning. The latter two are still amongst my favorite RPG settings of all time.
More recently I've tried to run a few other games. I say "tried" because as I grow older it's harder and harder to get a solid game going. Life and reality gets in the way. Stupid life and reality.
Currently, I'm trying to get a Battlestar Galactica game going. We got characters created but I had to scrap the last game because, again, life got in the way.
Because it was requested I'll spend a few moments talking about the Battlestar Galactica RPG. The core book is set during season one of the series so don't look for information about the Pegasus or anything. There is some information in the books that we, the audience, only learned after season one but none of it is plot related. For example, we didn't learn anything about Aerelon until after season one, and that was when we learned Baltar was from there. His description of the colony world serves as the book's entry for it. But no huge plot events from season two or three are touched upon in the book itself.
The Battlestar Galactica RPG uses the Cortex System, as owned by Margaret Weis Productions, and first saw light in the Serenity RPG (based upon the movie Serenity, itself based upon the canceled Fox sci-fi series Firefly).
The Cortex System is skill based but instead of rolling more dice or adding higher modifiers to rolls as you advance in skill, you simply swap a lower sided die for a higher sided die. And unless you specialize in a skill category you can not roll anything higher than a D6 for any skill. So for example, if you want to shoot a gun, but you don't have any gun specializations, you'd only roll a D6 (plus the appropriate attribute). However, if you specialized in pistols (D8) you'd roll D6+D8+attribute die to get your total result. The GM sets the difficulty and if your result meets or exceeds if, you win.
To play the game you need a single D2 (the games calls it that, I say flip a coin), D4, D6, D8, D10, and D12. That's it.
You also get to choose from a list of traits called assets and complications. They're nothing more than merits and flaws. The game requires you to have at least one of each. We all know what merits and flaws do.
What's unique about the Cortex System are "Plot Points." The game describes plot points as:
Plot Points are your edge. They let you do things - add dice to rolls, suffer less in combat, or shift the story in your favor. You spend them to survive SNAFUs; you get them for doing stuff that makes the game fun or moves the story along.
The game encourages players and GM both to exchange plot points liberally. GMs should feel free to give them out often and players should feel free to spend them often. To see plot points in action simply look at the Battlestar Galactica series. Whenever someone pulls off something impossible, something that simply shouldn't work, they spent a plot point. Survive a combat landing after flying through Galactica's flack cloud just before it jumped away? Plot point. Wedged the wing of your Viper onto the wing of another disabled Viper and landed without killing you both? Plot point. Blind jump your battlestar just before you're about to be struck by multiple nuclear warheads and live to tell the tale? Plot point (or two or three).
Plot points are the stuff that make heroic things possible.
So, in a nutshell, that's the Battlestar Galactica RPG. The book establishes the setting well, the dice system (in my opinion) is simple and robust, and despite some spelling errors, it's a solid book. I only wish supplements would come out faster. The game has been out since September 1st and the GM screen isn't even available yet.
I think that's enough dorkiness for now. If there's a desire I'm more than happy to rant about how Wizards of the Coast is treating the Star Wars RPG license like a red-headed step-child in order to make Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition more profitable.
